1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a television signal receiver comprising a plurality of processing means for executing respective processing operations on a received television signal. A receiver of this type is, for example, a television apparatus, a video recorder or a CDI player.
2. Description of the Related Art
Receivers of the type described in the opening paragraph are generally known. The signal received from a tuner, tape or disc is subjected, in the receiver, to a plurality of processing operations each having a predetermined function. For example, a television apparatus comprises, inter alia, the following processing means:
a sync separator which separates synchronizing signals from the video signal for deriving horizontal and vertical deflection signals for a display screen; PA1 a color decoder which splits the television signal into chrominance signals and a luminance signal for generating three elementary color signals R, G and B; PA1 a teletext decoder which regenerates a data signal in the vertical retrace period of the television signal, stores the data of a selected page, and reads, decodes and displays this data at a desired picture frequency; PA1 an audio decoder for decoding the audio signal; and PA1 an operating circuit.
In the known television receivers, said processing means are realized in the form of specially developed integrated circuits (ICs). Each IC has a given processing power for executing the processing operation, this processing power being determined, to a considerable extent, by previously fixed requirements of picture quality, sound quality and convenience of operation. The processing power of an IC becomes manifest in the quantity of chip surface area. The plurality of ICs and peripheral components in the receiver represents the overall processing power of the receiver. This overall processing power is also dependent on the extent to which the receiver has features such as teletext, picture-in-picture, stereo sound and multi-standard reception.
The overall processing power of the known television receiver is determined by the sum of the processing power of all processing means. The processing power is fixed as soon as the ICs have been chosen and interconnected and is independent of the fact whether a given processing operation is executed or not executed. The functionality of the known receiver is also fixed invariably.